[A psychological study, using interviews and projective tests, of patients seeking anonymous donor artificial insemination].
A Thematic Aperception Test was used with 13 male and 16 female patients who were requesting A.I.D. The following main psychological reactions were found in women: anxiety and depression (fear of rejection by their family and friends; lowering the image of the husband--the donor being considered as a rival), aggression (the narcissistic woman "demands" A.I.D.; the donor is esteemed highly); mother is protective ("true" paternity comes through love of the child and the need to forget the donor). They found, in men: an inability to abandon fertility as lost (with denial of sterility); ambivalence, castration anxiety and a feeling of being excluded from the mother-child symbiosis with later acceptance of loss of fertility and (sometimes excessively) identification with the "mother". Most subjects studied were not intending telling the child about his true origin; because disclosure would be tantamount to transgressing twice over the laws of paternity and the rules against Oedipus behaviour. There is often a great difference between the ways the partners view the matter and inter-relate. We strongly recommend that psychological advice should be taken before treatment with A.I.D. is started.
Van Thiel
M
M
Service de Psychologie du Développement, Faculté des Sciences Psychologiques et Pédagogiques, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgique.
Mantadakis
E
E
Vekemans
M
M
Gillot de Vries
F
F
D000374:Aggression / Q000523:psychology; D001007:Anxiety / Q000523:psychology; D001290:Attitude; D003863:Depression / Q000523:psychology; D005219:Father-Child Relations; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007248:Infertility, Male / Q000523:psychology; D007316:Insemination, Artificial, Heterologous / Q000523:psychology*; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D007406:Interview, Psychological; D008297:Male; D009034:Mother-Child Relations; D012737:Sex Factors; D013803:Thematic Apperception Test
Etude, par entretiens et tests projectifs, du psychisme de patient(e)s ayant recours à l'insémination artificielle par donneur anonyme.